DATA VISUALISATION 101 WITH TABLEAU

ORGANIZER: GENERAL ASSEMBLY
INSTRUCTOR: DANON GABRIEL THE

Connect to data

Download data file titled sampletableaudata.csv at this link — http://bit.ly/1UbViHY
Open Tableau
On the left panel, under “Connect”, select Text File (for CSV; choose Excel for Tableau and other file types accordingly)
Browse to where you saved the data file, select it, and click OK

File > Save As
Select location you want to save file
Click drop down to see 2 options — Tableau Workbook (.twb) and Tableau Packaged Workbook (.twbx)
Select Tableau Packaged Workbook (.twbx)
Name your file
Hit Save

Extracting your data optimises and compresses the data so your file is smaller in size and more efficient
On the top left, right click on the dataset “sampletableaudata"
Click Extract data
Hit Extract
Save file

Let’s create a simple bar chart
On the bottom, click the New Worksheet icon to create a new Worksheet and name it V1
Click on Show Me on the top right to unhide the table (if it’s already showing, ignore this step)
Select Postal Code in dimensions and Sales in measures (Command click for Mac, Ctrl click for PC)
Click on the bar chart (3rd row, 1st column option for Show Me)
Now, let’s sort it — mouse over the top of the chart and the sort icon will show up; click it
Let’s hide the Show Me bar for now — click on Show Me
Now let’s make the visualisation richer
Let’s make the colour show Profits — drag and drop Profits into the Colors square in the Marks section
Let’s put a label on each bar to show Sales — drag and drop Sales into the Label square in the Marks section
Presto! Your first visualization!

Let’s create another with geodata
On the bottom, click the New Worksheet icon to create a new Worksheet and name it V2
Click on Show Me on the top right to unhide the table (if it’s already showing, ignore this step)
Select Country and City in dimensions and Sales in measures — yes, 3 fields (Command click for Mac, Ctrl click for PC)
Click on the map with bubbles (2nd row, 1st column)
Let’s hide the Show Me bar for now — click on Show Me to hide
Make the circles a little larger — click on the Size square in the Marks tab and increase it slightly
Now, change the color to represent profit; drag and drop the Profit measure into the color square in the Marks tab
Let’s make the color a bit transparent — click on the Color square in marks, and reduce opacity to 85%

Let’s create a line chart
On the bottom, click the New Worksheet icon to create a new Worksheet and name it V3
Click on Show Me on the top right to unhide the table (if it’s already showing, ignore this step)
Select Order date in dimensions and Sales in measures (Command click for Mac, Ctrl click for PC)
Click on the line chart (4th column, 1st row)
Click on the arrow on the YEAR pill in Column on the top
Select Month from the dropdown
Let’s get more granularity — drag and drop Segment into the Color square in the Marks tab to break it out by Segment
Tip for later — right click on a line and add a trendline

Let’s create a pie chart
On the bottom, click the New Worksheet icon to create a new Worksheet and name it V4
Select Segment in dimensions and Sales in measures (Command click for Mac, Ctrl click for PC)
Click on the pie chart (3rd column, 2nd row)
Let’s make it larger — click on Dropdown that now says Normal and select Entire View
Drag and drop Segment into Label square in the Marks tab
Now, drag and drop Sales into the Label square in the Marks tab
In the Marks tab, mouse over the Sales pill under Label (the pill should have Abc123 next to it)
Select Quick Table Calculation
Select Percent of total
Now, drag and drop Sales into the Label square in the Marks tab again
Done!

Now, let’s use a calculated field
On the bottom, click the New Worksheet icon to create a new Worksheet and name it V5
Right click anywhere a blank space on the measures pane on the left
Select Create Calculated Field
Name the calculation — “Profit / Sales Ratio"
Drag and drop Profit from Measures into the Calculation dialogue
Hit / to indicate you want to divide Profit by another number
Drag and drop Sales from Measures into the Calculation dialogue after the above-mentioned /
It should say [Profit]/[Sales] and that “calculation is valid"
Press OK
Select the Region dimension and your new calculated field name Profit / Sales Ratio
Click on bar chart
Can you tell which are the most profitable (by profit margin) regions?

Let’s go back to the first worksheet (V1) with your bars
Right click on the Region measure, and select Show Filter
Done! A simple filter is now available
Right click on the arrow on the top right of the filter to explore options
For now, let’s make it a radio button filter, click Single values list
Let’s add a quantitative filter
Drag and drop Sales into the Filters tab
Select All values
Let’s choose At Least — click on that option and press OK
Now, right click on the Sales button in Filters and choose Show Filter
It now shows up on the right next to your earlier filter
Play with your filters and answer this — How many postal codes are making at least $4,000 in the Central region?
Exporting visualizations
- If you want to export an image —Worksheet > Export > Image
- Select what components you want to export and click Save, select location and hit Save
- You can also choose to export the Crosstab data which is the summarized/aggregated data from your worksheet

For now, let’s remove the filters
Drag and drop the filters in your earlier example back to the Dimensions column
At the bottom, click New Dashboard
Drag and drop V1, V2, V3 and V4 into the dashboard to make a 2X2 grid
At the bottom left under Dashboard, change Desktop to Automatic
On the top right hand side of the map (V2), click the drop down and choose Use as Filter
Repeat this for the pie chart in V4
Let’s interact with the dashboard!
Try clicking on difference slices in the V4 pie chart
Click a blank white space to deselect after
Now try clicking on cities/circles on the map; you can even drag and select a region!

You now have a working knowledge of Tableau after completing this class.

Yours sincerely,
Danon Gabriel The